Ballet Director Exits But No Final Word On Leap To Opera

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday September 14, 2007

Valerie Lawson

THE Australian Ballet's executive director, Richard Evans, resigned from the company yesterday, and will leave at the end of December.

Mr Evans announced his departure at a meeting of the company's staff in Melbourne.

He told staff that he was not in a position to confirm or deny a report in yesterday's Herald that he is to become the next chief executive of the Sydney Opera House.

Since the resignation of Norman Gillespie early last month Sue Nattrass has been interim chief executive and is likely to continue in that role until Mr Evans takes up the position of chief executive.

Mr Evans, 39, joined the Australian Ballet in 2002, after five years as general manager of the Bell Shakespeare Company.

His possible successors at the ballet company include Josephine Ridge, the general manager of the Sydney Festival, and Patrick McIntyre, the associate executive director of the Australian Ballet.

Ms Ridge was formerly the deputy general manager of the Australian Ballet but resigned in 2002, three weeks after the announcement that Mr Evans had won the top job. She was one of seven people in contention as general manager.

Asked yesterday if she is interested in returning to the Australian Ballet, Ms Ridge said: "I haven't given it a thought. I can't give you a response on that."

Mr McIntyre, a former general manager of the Sydney Film Festival, was recruited by Mr Evans as the Australian Ballet's director of market development in 2003, later becoming associate executive director.

In the past, both he and Ms Ridge have stressed the need for the Australian Ballet to develop new, younger audiences.

The need is still pressing, as the 34-year old New York-based choreographer Christopher Wheeldon said in an interview this week.

Wheeldon, the founder of a new transatlantic ballet company, told The Times: "Ballet has an ageing audience pretty much wherever you go. Sydney, for instance, was shocking to me. I sat there at the Opera House and was hard pushed to count maybe five or six people my age or under in the audience."

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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